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A review by afrathefish
The Burning God by R.F. Kuang
3.5
r f kuang sets the precedent on writing anti heroes, and in this book especially, you really see her set precedent to what babel would become.
the plot really is a marvel - it is very fucking long but then again so is the book. but it ingeniously captures the rise of revolutions, and the fall of those who lead them. how a wartime strategist can never lead a country, and how a country that has eaten itself to war falls apart. it perfectly replicates the enormity of war and the effects of it, and the fickleness that actually cause it. we see old friends nezha and rin essentially tear apart a country in order to satiate their egos, and you see the devastating aftermath of it all. you see the toxic relationship previous colonies have with their colonisers, an effect you still very much see replicated today. it really is genius.
i just really struggled with some parts of it. the way the shamans were assembled felt very … avengers-ey and … i couldn’t vibe with it as well as i wanted to. also more so than the other books, this had way too many characters that it was hard to actually care for them toward the end. of course bc it’s R F Kuang, nearly all of them were pretty much carved out very well. the issue was that there was too many to actually keep count of and so as people died, you didn’t have the capacity to cry. also i hated rin at the end. i really did. again bc kuang is a genius, all of her paranoia and her stupidity made sense. it still wasn’t fun to read though.
and so while kuang pretty much remains the blueprint in writing anti heroes and shitty characters, your patience does begin to wane when they actually are quite shitty. nonetheless. it still is mastery in book form.
i also wish rin and nezha had a better ending.
the plot really is a marvel - it is very fucking long but then again so is the book. but it ingeniously captures the rise of revolutions, and the fall of those who lead them. how a wartime strategist can never lead a country, and how a country that has eaten itself to war falls apart. it perfectly replicates the enormity of war and the effects of it, and the fickleness that actually cause it. we see old friends nezha and rin essentially tear apart a country in order to satiate their egos, and you see the devastating aftermath of it all. you see the toxic relationship previous colonies have with their colonisers, an effect you still very much see replicated today. it really is genius.
i just really struggled with some parts of it. the way the shamans were assembled felt very … avengers-ey and … i couldn’t vibe with it as well as i wanted to. also more so than the other books, this had way too many characters that it was hard to actually care for them toward the end. of course bc it’s R F Kuang, nearly all of them were pretty much carved out very well. the issue was that there was too many to actually keep count of and so as people died, you didn’t have the capacity to cry. also i hated rin at the end. i really did. again bc kuang is a genius, all of her paranoia and her stupidity made sense. it still wasn’t fun to read though.
and so while kuang pretty much remains the blueprint in writing anti heroes and shitty characters, your patience does begin to wane when they actually are quite shitty. nonetheless. it still is mastery in book form.
i also wish rin and nezha had a better ending.